The Auschwitz Volunteer: Captain Witold Pilecki, a multimedia dramatic performance based on the award-winning book The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, premieres on Broadway in a SOLD OUT performance on Sunday, November 11, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. at the Theatre Row Theatres, 410 West 42nd Street, New York 10036, as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival. Next show is the Wednesday Matinee, November 14, 2018 at 3:30 p.m. Tickets are available at the box office or in advance online at: http://unitedsolo.org/us/theauschwitzvolunteer-2018-2/

One man volunteered for Auschwitz. This is his story.

Called “one of the great heroes of the 20th century” by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, Pilecki’s bravery has few rivals. His story has been almost completely unknown, until now.

Starring and directed by Marek Probosz, with narration appearance by Terry Tegnazian, the show was adapted for the stage by Terry Tegnazian and Debra Gendel from The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery by Captain Witold Pilecki (Aquila Polonica 2012). This book was the first time that Pilecki’s most comprehensive report on his Auschwitz mission was translated and published in English.

In September 1940, Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered for a secret undercover mission: get himself arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner, in order to smuggle out intelligence to the Allies, and build a resistance organization among the prisoners. Pilecki accomplished this “mission impossible”—barely surviving nearly three years of brutality, starvation and disease before escaping.

The book received accolades from the New York Times Sunday Book Review, where it was named an Editors’ Choice, the Wall St. Journal, the New Republic, the Atlantic, Tablet Magazine, Publishers Weekly, the Jewish Journal, and numerous other sources. More info at http://www.polww2.com/AboutAuschwitzVolunteer.

Marek Probosz, a preeminent figure in European stage, television and film, has starred in over 50 films competing at key international festivals including Cannes, Venice and San Sebastian. He maintains a busy career as an actor, writer, director and producer in TV, film and stage in both Poland and the U.S., and also as Adjunct Associate Professor of Theater and Film Acting at UCLA in Los Angeles. Mr. Probosz earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting from the prestigious Polish National Film, TV and Theater School in Łódź, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Directing from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. More info at www.polww2.com/MarekProbosz

Terry Tegnazian is president and founder of Aquila Polonica Publishing, www.AquilaPolonica.com, an award-winning independent publisher based in Los Angeles, specializing in publishing the Polish WWII experience in English. The company is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). Aquila Polonica’s titles are distributed to the trade in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Europe, Australia and New Zealand by National Book Network, www.nbnbooks.com, and are available from fine bookstores, online retailers, and all major wholesalers. More info at www.polww2.com/TerryTegnazian

Co-sponsored by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute operating under the Culture.pl brand, the Polish Consulate of Los Angeles, the Polish Consulate of New York, and the Polish Cultural Institute in New York. Co-financed in part with Polish diaspora funds of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

Duluth, Ga., November 6, 2018: As part of their ongoing commitment to supporting public libraries, Above the Treeline and the Equinox Open Library Initiative are excited to announce a tool which facilitates export of data from Koha into Edelweiss, allowing for detailed collection analysis. Libraries who use Koha will be able to easily configure scheduled data exports from their Koha ILS into Edelweiss+Analytics.

“We are very excited to extend Edelweiss+ support to Koha users,” said Mike Rylander, president and founder of Equinox. “Equinox is always looking for ways to improve library services through partnerships, and Above the TreeLine has been extremely easy to work with."

Equinox Open Library Initiative is a nonprofit founded in 2007. They currently help libraries and consortia of all types leverage open source solutions to best serve their patrons. They are passionate about the ongoing development of open source technologies for libraries. The addition of Edelweiss+Analytics functionality provides Koha libraries with increased flexibility and resources.

“The teams at Equinox and Above the Treeline are both committed to supporting the work of library professionals,” said John Rubin, Founder and CEO of Above the Treeline, the company behind Edelweiss+. “With the technical setup accelerated and simplified, libraries can quickly start using tools to help them manage their collection and maximize their budgets.”

The Edelweiss+ platform is used by over 100,000 book professionals to sell, discover, and order new titles. It hosts digital catalogs from all major publishers and over 95% of the US frontlist titles. Edelweiss+Analytics is an add-on module that allows libraries to simplify collection management and benchmark their performance. It helps librarians identify circulation trends, weed stale titles, select faster-circulating titles, compare location and collection performance, benchmark to libraries and retailers across the country, and more.

The partnership between Equinox and Above the Treeline started as a result of partnering to integrate Edelweiss+Analytics and Evergreen ILS, another open source solution supported by Equinox. The functionality for Evergreen was so popular with libraries that the team decided to expand the awesomeness to Koha.

About Equinox Open Library Initiative
Equinox Open Library Initiative is a nonprofit company engaging in literary, charitable, and educational endeavors serving cultural and knowledge institutions. As the successor to Equinox Software, Inc., the Initiative carries forward a decade of service and experience with Evergreen and other open source library software. At Equinox OLI we help you empower your library with open source technologies. To learn more, please visit https://www.equinoxinitiative.org/.

About Koha
Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, Koha is the first open source Integrated Library System to be used worldwide. The software is a full-featured ILS with a dual-database design (search engine and RDBMS) built to be compliant with library standards. Koha’s OPAC, staff, and self-checkout interfaces are all web applications. Distributed under the General Public License (GPL), libraries are free to use and install Koha themselves or to purchase support and development services. For more information on Koha, please visit http://koha-community.org.

About Above the Treeline
We connect the world with books. Edelweiss+, powered by Above the Treeline, gives over 100,000 book professionals a single source of information to sell, discover, and order new titles. Our analytical and workflow tools have helped publishers, booksellers, libraries, and reviewers “work better, read more” for over 15 years. We proudly serve thousands of retail outlets, libraries, and publishing houses across the United States and Europe.

Above the Treeline is a privately-owned company based in Ann Arbor, MI. It was founded in 2002 by John Rubin, the son of an Indie bookseller and grandson of a librarian, who saw an opportunity to increase business efficiency in the book industry with technical solutions. While our product functionality has grown significantly since then, we continue to be dedicated to serving book professionals. For more information, go to http://www.abovethetreeline.com
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